Like other large, global B2B companies, BMC Software faces some pretty gnarly content challenges, from telling a consistent brand story across multiple business units to delivering information that customers need to evaluate, buy and successfully use BMC’s products. In 2014, BMC worked with Connective DX on their global website relaunch, mapping all content and design decisions to one goal: increasing marketing-sourced pipeline.

At the recent Intelligent Content Conference in San Francisco, BMC’s Principal Strategic Marketing Manager Mark Fries and Connective DX Experience Strategist Guy Bourgault shared insights into their ongoing work, which has already yielded impressive results. Here are a few of the highlights from their session.

Intelligent content enables smart user experience

Before launching into design, the Connective DX team developed a series of content models for key pages. A content model is an abstract view of the content, which focuses on the purpose of different parts of the page and covers user mindset, form and strategic rationale.

Intelligent content is characterized by structured, modular content that can be easily reused across different formats, devices and channels. So an intelligent content approach is essential for a brand and website with a global footprint.

Start with the money

Because the primary goal was increasing the marketing-sourced pipeline that could be attributed to the website, the redesign focused not on the homepage but on the product pages where buyers make decisions. People get to your pages via Google not your homepage, Mark said.

Mobile first, mobile always

A mobile-first approach forces you to consider and prioritize tasks that users need to complete. "Mobile first is actually device-agnostic,” Mark said. "The experience will be appropriate on any device, not just mobile devices."

Never redesign again

“You’re not launching a website; you’re launching a hypothesis,” Mark said. “Then you’re constantly testing assumptions about what users need and value. It's never one and done."

For example, BMC and the Connective DX team had assumed site visitors would be most interested in the business benefits customers could see with BMC’s products, and they prioritized that information on the site. But Mark says one of the first “aha” moments they had was discovering that people were actually most interested in the product features. So they quickly reordered the content to prioritize data sheets.

As Guy said, "If you can change what’s not working without blowing up the whole site, then you’ve created something very powerful.”

Project pays off with increase in pipeline

In the months since the site launched, BMC has already seen dramatic bump in overall engagement:

10% more organic traffic (YOY)

50% more data sheet downloads

200% increase in trial starts

67% increase in “contact me” requests

You can dive into deeper details in this presentation Mark and Guy shared.

Connective Thinking

Specific Topics

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You’ve been running a testing program on your website, optimized micro-interactions, and gotten your conversion points humming. Now it's time to stop talking about numbers and start talking with customers.